Telluride Film Festival 2026 Overview (Part Two) – Diane Carson reports
The outstanding films described in the Telluride Film Festival 2026 Overview Part One comprise just a diverse sampling. Here, in Part Two, among other diverse selections meriting praise, again documentaries and fiction films figure in the mix. Most striking, actors’ performances in the narratives deserve particular commendation for their exceptional realization of complex, often fraught and difficult characters. For their part, the nonfiction works bring their topics to vivid life through well-chosen footage, fine editing, and unobtrusive music and sound.
Analyzed separately in a full review at AWFJ.org, Eleanor Coppola’s Making Marie Antoinette perceptively documents daughter Sofia’s third 2006 feature film, Marie Antoinette, entirely through behind-the-scenes footage. Over a 57 day shoot with a $40 million budget, as only an insider can, Eleanor bobs and weaves in and out of the preparations for shooting multiple scenes. Thoroughly knowledgeable about the multifarious production essentials, Eleanor provides rare and informative moments for the thousands of decisions that Sofia must make and the extensive minutiae that matter in a film. As noted in the full AWFJ.org review, at the Telluride Film Festival premier screening, Sofia introduced the documentary explaining that during the pandemic she and Eleanor decided to tackle and wrestle into shape 80 hours of footage. After Eleanor died in 2024, Sofia completed the editing, a heartfelt tribute to her mother.
A second nonfiction film discussed in a full review at AWFJ.org, The Natural State is a decidedly unexpected profile of the emphatically reluctant Indian anti-guru U.G. Krishnamurti. In a daring endeavor, director Matthew Dougherty relentlessly probes the charismatic appeal of U.G., as he’s called, who repeatedly and adamantly tells his followers that he has no secrets or truths to share with them and that, moreover, he has no interest in changing them. Rejecting that pronouncement, in 1989, abandoning her family, Julie Thayer left New York City for the Swiss Alps, eventually attaching herself and her psychological wellbeing to U.G. Ignoring his periodic commands to go away, Julie filmed hundreds of hours of U.G. while also keeping a diary of her despair alternating with ecstasy. Drawing on Julie’s footage and writings, Dougherty interprets the curious and nonsensical events defining U.G. and his uninvited entourage. See more at that film’s AWFJ.org review.
